The following news release was faxed to media outlets in Idaho, eastern Oregon, and northern Nevada today:
At a special awards dinner in Hailey, Idaho on Saturday December 4, 1999, Idaho Watersheds Project announced the winners of its first annual "Golden Cowpie" award.
This award is made to the federal or state land management office which has shown resolute and unbending success in managing public lands ranching to assure continued degradation of publicly owned natural resources. Because the abuse of public lands by public lands ranching occurs everywhere this activity is permitted, there is an exceptional degree of competition for this honor.
The joint "Golden Cowpie" Award winners for 1999 are the Owyhee Resource Area of the Bureau of Land Management headquartered in Boise, Idaho and the Lost River Ranger District of the Challis/Salmon National Forest headquartered in Mackay, Idaho. These two federal agency offices have exhibited the most remarkable neglect of their responsibility to protect public lands from livestock abuse in 1999 and will receive a plaque and a gold-colored cowpie in acknowledgement of their rising to the top.
Idaho Watersheds project also announced that this year's runners up for the award were the Elko Field Office of the BLM headquartered in Elko, Nevada and the Jordan Resource Area of the BLM, headquartered in Vale, Oregon.
Jon Marvel, President of Idaho Watersheds Project, a non-profit conservation group with 1000 members, stated: " IWP is hopeful that any public notice brought onto these agency offices by this award will motivate them to actually start to do the job they have been hired for-- to protect our public lands for ours and future generations of Americans."